Municipal and county water departments are frequently confronted with unauthorized use of fire hydrants by members of the public who, on occasion, open the valves of the hydrants to obtain water to cool off on hot days or for the purpose of filling tank trucks with fresh water which are then sold for various purposes such as filling swimming pools and watering lawns. In cities, open fire hydrants can result in a drop in water pressure to customers, and can occasionally endanger a community by reducing the availability of water necessary to fight fires. In attempts to secure fire hydrants from unauthorized use, fire companies have employed locking devices which use magnetically operated valves. Generally, a magnetically operated valve utilizes a magnetic detent which couples a valve operating nut of a fire hydrant to a sleeve, which is normally freely rotatable with respect to the nut. The magnet is attracted by a second magnet permanently mounted in a wrench which cooperates with the sleeve to rotate the sleeve. With the help of magnets, sledge hammers and other nefarious devices, water thieves and vandals are increasingly able to defeat magnetic locking devices.
Accordingly, there is a need for improvement in magnetic locks for hydrant operating devices which minimizes the effectiveness of various techniques employed by unauthorized users to operate the valves.
In their attempt to open fire hydrants, vandals and water thieves frequently pound on fire hydrants with sledge hammers and similar devices and inflict all kinds of havoc on valve operating devices, whether those devices are magnetic or not. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an arrangement which further protects both the bonnet of fire hydrants and locking devices from vandals. It is within the purview of the problem to protect locking devices which are non-magnetic, but which require special wrench configurations to operate the devices.